At a great crisis in the history of the American Commonwealth, Abraham Lincoln in a speech delivered in June, 1858, used these words: “If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it.” The British Commonwealth has reached a crisis in its affairs, but the nature of the crisis escapes the diagnosis of most students and many are inclined, therefore, to echo the words which Lincoln used nearly a hundred years ago. It seems worth while, accordingly, to set down as simply as possible some of the changes that have occurred in the structure and composition of the Commonwealth in recent years, in the hope that, on this basis, some judgment may be hazarded about “where we are and whither we are tending.”

When the War ended in 1945 the British Commonwealth could still be described in the terms adopted almost twenty years before, at the Imperial Conference of 1926, as a group of “autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations.”

It is often said that the foreign policy of the United States is in need of maturing and that the American people and their government must grow up if they want to emerge victorious from the trials of our age. It would be truer to say that this generation of Americans must shed the illusions of their fathers and grandfathers and relearn the great principles of statecraft which guided the path of the republic in the first decade and—in moralistic disguise—in the first century of its existence. The United States offers the singular spectacle of a commonwealth whose political wisdom did not grow slowly through the accumulation and articulation of experiences. Quite to the contrary, the full flowering of its political wisdom was coeval with its birth as an independent nation—nay, it owed its existence and survival as an independent nation to those extraordinary qualities of political insight, historic perspective, and common sense which the first generation of Americans applied to the affairs of state.

This classic age of American statecraft comes to an end with the physical disappearance of that generation of American statesmen. The rich and varied landscape in which they had planted all that is worthwhile in the tradition of Western political thought was allowed to go to waste. It became a faint and baffling remembrance, a symbol to be worshipped rather than a source of inspiration and a guide for action.

It is a traditional practice for individuals and institutions to celebrate anniversaries, particularly such landmarks as the half century and centennial years. Perhaps more significant in the case of professional journals are the periods ending distinguished editorships. This article deals with the growth of the American Political Science Review under the editorship of Frederick A. Ogg covering the period 1926–1949.

The Ogg editorship of the Review is perhaps not the longest to be found in the annals of American academic journals, but, extending as it did over a period of twenty-four years, it is nevertheless impressive from the standpoint of any measuring stick based on time. As far as the Review itself is concerned, the Ogg editorship easily establishes a record. W. W. Willoughby, the first editor, served approximately ten years and John A. Fairlie, his successor in the editor's chair, completed nine years of service.

But while the duration of an editorship is not without significance, other aspects are perhaps even more important. If a few editors of journals in other professional fields may have equalled or even exceeded the Ogg editorship in point of time, it is to be doubted whether any has made more of an impact, or has devoted himself more generously to his work. Professor Ogg used his editorial pencil vigorously in connection with the articles both long and short; in addition, he prepared the news and notes, assigned the book reviews, read the printer's proof, and solicited advertisements from various publishers.

Few persons who look at the world thoughtfully are complacent. It is difficult to believe that the balance of power will become more stable. Quite the contrary! A degree of bi-polarity in world politics has been reached which compels each of the opposing groups to bend its efforts to bring the remaining neutrals into its orbit and to augment its power. If the war which each regards as a possibility should come, each wants to be sure that it will not be the loser. The race in atomic weapons and armaments of all kinds is on and experience suggests, as in the rivalries between sections before the American Civil War and the rivalries between alliances before the first World War, that such a race will eventuate in war.

There is no balancer in a bi-polar world, nor are there uncommitted powers which may cast their lot on one side or the other in a crisis. The process of nucleation about the two poles makes prediction of the power potential of each more and more feasible. It becomes increasingly clear to one side that time is with it and to the other that time is against it. Under such circumstances each expects war and it can be anticipated that the side which becomes convinced that time is against it will start the war. Fortunately there are still many unknown variables in the present situation. No precise calculation is yet possible, though it may be in the course of a few years. However, if war comes, there are few who doubt that atomic weapons would be used and that the human race would face disaster.

The prosecution of the cold war on the domestic front was a major concern of the state legislatures which convened in 1949. Quantitatively, last year's output of state laws against subversive movements surpassed that of any other year in our history except 1919. It was a rare hopper which did not receive at least a sprinkling of bills of this sort. And the fact that no more than fifteen states enacted anti-Communist laws can be attributed in large part to the inability of lawmakers to think of restrictive measures which an earlier legislature had not already placed on the statute books.

As 1950 began, Maine alone among the states was without a law designed specifically to repress or combat subversive organizations or individuals. Thirty-eight states at that date had criminal statutes prohibiting acts of violence and utterances urging violence for the purpose of effecting political or economic change. Although Tennessee's Sedition Act goes back to 1715 and two other states enacted similar statutes in the nineteenth century, these laws are for the most part products of the present century.

Scholarly analysis of contemporary Soviet realities has faced increasing difficulties in recent years. Direct access to the Soviet Union is denied to all except a handful of diplomats, journalists, and business men on special missions, and even the very few who gain access find themselves largely cut off from all except carefully controlled official contacts. There is still a substantial quantitative flow of books and periodicals from the Soviet Union, but compared with the rich and revealing documentation of the first decade of the Soviet period, the current output appears arid, formalistic, and deliberately designed to confine the circulation of data and ideas to the bare minimum required by the regime's internal communication needs. Given skill, insight, and background, there is still much to be learned from official publications and the samo-kritika (self-criticism) which they contain, but the obstacles are formidable, and the search for meaningful patterns of fact and motivation is at the best an elusive and tantalizing adventure.

The question has been raised from time to time by British thinkers whether there ought not to be some central organ of “society,” some social parliament or even some general system of social parliaments, which might be added to the political parliament of the State, and might stand by its side in some sort of relation, either subordinate or coordinate. Such an organ or parliament would function either as an advisory body (or system of advisory bodies), or as a sort of “relief” legislature, parallel to the regular legislature, to ease the burden of legislation by carrying some part of its heavy traffic. Hitherto, so the arguments run, there has been only a single political mirror, the political legislature, which reflects or “represents” the legal association as such (or in other words, the legally organized State). Ought we not also to have another mirror, or a set of mirrors, reflecting some one great aspect of “society” as such, or even several of its different aspects?

The suggestion most commonly made is of a single social mirror, an economic council, or “parliament,” or “sub-parliament,” reflecting the one great aspect of society implied in the adjective “economic.” That suggestion acquired vogue, and even seemed likely to be translated into fact, at the close of the War of 1914–18.

Who rules Britain? For the political scientist hunting out the real core of power, the question is hard to answer. Students of British politics have variously concluded that the Cabinet, or Parliament, or the party in power, or the administrative class of civil servants, or the “Big Three” (or Four, or Five)—or some combination of these—actually held the reins of authority. Constitutionally, however, the question is an easy one. Formal power rests with a majority of the Members of Parliament. This majority can pass laws and raise money, can bring down governments and make new ones, can change the Constitution itself.

Those who have ruled Britain in this sense during the past five years have been a few hundred Labor Members of the House of Commons, organized in the Parliamentary Labor Party. Constitutionally, this is the ruling group, every member of which has equal power. In fact, a small minority of Labor Members, grouped in or about the Cabinet, actually make the great decisions of state. At the same time, the large majority of Labor Members not only lack real power but even in their very name —Backbenchers—they appear as the symbols of impotence.

The Hoover Commission Reports were not written for the educator and his students. The audience was broader and the objective was immediate reform. Nevertheless, the educator must pause at this milepost and take stock. The reports are thrust upon him as inescapable materials for analysis in class and seminar rooms; they record in considerable measure the state of achievement in the development of administrative science; they challenge an examination now of the directions and scope of educational motive forces in the next phase of university education in public administration.

Most teachers of public administration probably found the reports of the President's Committee on Administrative Management and of the Attorney General's Committee on Administrative Procedure to be very valuable aids in teaching. The publication of the Report with Special Studies and the Final Report provided a considerable body of material in convenient form for teacher and student use, and the over-all summary of the Committee on Administrative Management even provided material which could be used in introductory courses in American government. Also, these earlier reports dealt with problems at the growing points in the study of public administration and offered basic points of view around which discussion could be centered.

The aim of this paper is to make a modest contribution toward improved understanding of how the political process actually operates in America. It reports the results of some research on individual citizen participation in political activity and describes a tool that may be used for classifying individuals in terms of the amount of political activity in which they engage. Finally it outlines some differences that are observed when attitudes with respect to some public personalities and issues held by the politically active portion of the citizenry are compared with attitudes of the politically inert.

The research study from which the data reported here are derived is one of a long series carried out over the past five years for the Public Relations Department of the Standard Oil Company (N. J.). The primary purpose of these studies has been to find out how the company stands with the American public —to learn what virtues people credit to it and what sins they think it is committing. Research on such topics inevitably involves the question of who among the vast body of American citizens are most articulate in their feelings about big corporations and most concerned to defend or attack them. Since similar questions arise whenever the citizen's role with respect to any public issue comes up, the tools developed for corporation public relations may have much wider applicability and usefulness.

There were no changes in the personnel of the Court while it was in session, but the deaths of Justices Frank Murphy and Wiley Rutledge during the summer adjournment marked the 1948 term as the last to be dominated by an overwhelmingly preponderant majority of judges appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Justice Murphy's death occurred on July 19, 1949, soon after the adjournment of the Court on June 27. He took his seat on the Court on February 5, 1940, as the successor to Pierce Butler. Justice Rutledge died on September 10. He was the last of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's appointees to the Supreme Court. He was appointed on February 11, 1943, to succeed James F. Byrnes. The passing of these jurists may have been the most significant events as regards constitutional interpretation that occurred during 1948–1949.

From the Countryside to the Cities. Among the many practical problems with which the Chinese Communists have been recently confronted is that of governing large cities and administering policy in urban and metropolitan areas. Only two years ago the major preoccupation of the Chinese Communist Party was with agrarian policy, with emphases on land redistribution, Party reorganization to strengthen the revolution in rural areas, and the construction and maintenance of “rear bases” to support the fighting front. But in the epochal year beginning with the fall of Mukden on November 2, 1948, the directions and emphases of Chinese Communist policy were substantially modified by the new situation created by the rapid capture of all of the seaports, the most important industrial and commercial centers, and nearly all of the provincial capitals of China. To permit the most effective exploitation of this newly-gained strategic momentum, the Party leadership was obliged, on relatively short notice, to find immediate solutions for problems of urban policy that had previously been anticipated as likely to arise in the future.

Urban policy, accordingly, became the urgent question on the agenda of the Second Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, meeting in Shihchiachuang on March 15–23, 1949.

This is a report on the interviews used in preparing Southern Politics in State and Nation. The book, by V. O. Key, Jr., resulted from a study carried on over a three year period at the Bureau of Public Administration of the University of Alabama. Roscoe C. Martin, then director of the Bureau, originated the project, obtained support for it from the Rockefeller Foundation and gave it general supervision.

Mr. Key was assisted by several persons, including this writer. He directed a large share of the project's resources to the task of interviewing participants in southern politics. Forty per cent of the budget was allocated for the salaries and expenses of the two interviewers and for transcribing their reports. Thirty per cent of the time of the senior staff members and twenty per cent of the total time of the whole staff was spent in the field. The decision to devote this large amount of time and money to interviewing rested on the conviction that much significant political information could be obtained only from politicians themselves or from their close associates. It rested also on the belief that accurate observation would eliminate the need for conjecture about many political phenomena.

The trend towards public ownership or control of certain basic industries and services, particularly those relating to fuel, power, transport and banking, is a secular movement of world-wide dimensions. Traces of it can be found, in greater or less degree, in almost every country which is economically developed, and in many backward ones as well.

The political scientist who studies this subject in his own country is almost certain to feel strongly tempted to consider developments elsewhere. There is a deep fascination in comparing and contrasting the manner in which this great movement manifests itself in different countries. The pattern of development will inevitably be influenced by history, and by variations in the political, economic, legal, psychological and sociological characteristics of the several nations. These divergences, however, serve to heighten the interest by enabling us to distinguish the fundamental elements of general significance from the incidental aspects of local significance due to national idiosyncrasies.

Soviet leaders have long understood the need for effective administration in the modern state, despite their great interest in questions of theory and matters of policy. Joseph Stalin, in his first report as Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, warned in 1923 that “policy loses its sense and is transformed into a waving of hands,” unless an efficient system for policy-execution exists. Consequently, Stalin and his lieutenants have constructed an extensive and diversified system for this purpose, using many agencies and reaching into every corner of Soviet society. Although the paucity of essential data makes a comprehensive analysis of the entire system virtually impossible at this time, it is noteworthy that recent Soviet materials have thrown some light on the functions and operations of one important segment of that system. This is an agency attached to the highest level of the Communist Party, the “Apparatus” of the Party's Central Committee.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) guides and controls all governmental, economic, social and other organizations in the USSR.

President Truman's stubborn determination to build on the New Deal's embattled foundations an imposing edifice called the Welfare State is stirring the business community and its spokesmen to renewed and outwardly bold hostilities. This present outcry for “welfare,” it seems, is not what it used to be: “The irresponsible clamor of the mob for bread and circuses.” “Welfare” is now recognized as “a justifiable demand, consonant with the necessities of social evolution,” and in keeping with our political tradition. The old jungle economy, at long last, must be discarded. All this is now cheerfully conceded. But whose responsibility is it to bring order out of chaos, whose business is it to formulate and administer the welfare program? There is the rub. Certainly not government's, business leaders assert, for ultimately that would spell not a glorious welfare society but an inglorious welfare state. This ignominious prelude to statism, to totalitarianism, to despotism, must be avoided at all cost. That is why certain publicists, ex-New Dealers, industrial leaders and university officials are alerting the business community to a fresh responsibility, the unique venture of capitalism today—“the greatest opportunity in the world,” Russell Davenport calls it, and peculiarly the concern of Free Enterprise.

Harvard's Business School Dean, Donald K. David, also points ominously at “The Danger of Drifting,” and sharply differentiates between “freedom to” and “freedom from,” between “equality of opportunity and equality of results,” etc., etc. These refinements are important, Dean David decides, because in them lies the crucial difference between welfare society (which he approves) and welfare state (which he deplores). How easy it is, he warns, to drift into the lethal arms of the welfare state. To foil the octopus of welfare, businessmen must be vigilant and aggressive. “Responsibility for this program,” Dean David concludes, “is going to be placed in the hands of the businessman, because we have, whether some people like it or not, an industrial civilization; and the businessman, whether he likes it or not, has to assume new responsibilities.”

Some twenty years ago Harold D. Lasswell, in his Psychopathology and Politics, attempted to show by case histories some of the motivations and personality characteristics of certain political types. This book was a pioneer in its field because it applied the psychoanalytic “free fantasy” technique to the field of political science. The case histories were chosen from those in selected hospitals and from the official files of certain psychiatrists. From these case histories, Lasswell was able to obtain information which threw new light on the actions of such political types as the agitator and the administrator. He then developed the formula p}d}r = P; where p equals private motives, d equals displacement onto public objects, r equals rationalization in terms of public interest, } means “transformed into,” and P signifies the political man.

Lasswell's techniques are invaluable for the study of political personalities and motives. It is unfortunate that others have not utilized them more fully and thereby added to the store of knowledge concerning the personalities of politicians; but a partial explanation lies in the fact that the techniques themselves present obstacles to their ready use by political scientists. In the first place, the case histories are usually confidential and difficult to obtain.

The central problem in national executive organization for water resources is that of fitting the service of specialized Federal agencies to the task of promoting the unified development of entire drainage basins. While technical recognition of the interlocking character of water resources development grew rapidly after 1920 and found expression in basin-wide plans, the administrative organization was unable to keep pace. It now presents conspicuous weaknesses which have been described by the Hoover Commission and its Task Force on Natural Resources. Remedial action involving the combination of several existing agencies and the creation of a central board of review have been recommended. An effort also has been initiated to correlate and reconcile the disperse and often conflicting Federal policies upon which the agencies are operating.